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This'll probably be the last thread I make regarding improvement, the game is about as milked out in content it can be. I decided to do it now because EU tier 10 is 3 arties every game so I don't really feel like I'm missing out by writing this up instead of playing. I'll also start off by saying that any question you might have (to me specifically) about anything game related when it comes to improvement, preventing tilt, getting out of a rut and so on all the way to tank/map specific things (opening positions, counters, timings, you name it) are things I will do my best to answer in this thread, if it isn't then ask it here and I'll answer to the best of my ability. It's also very little concrete advice here as the meta game gets trickier the higher you go, if you have any concrete questions to give the bones some meat then please do so. I play this game with absolutely no regard for the outside economy as the account I'm using has 450million credits with almost as much in consumables and there is nothing to grind on the account, it's simply missing some premiums and rewards. I also have acceptable crews for almost everything, and if I don't I switch them out. I don't take outside factors into consideration in the game. I won't keep firing AP instead of APCR for some extra credits at the cost of performance. I give myself the best chance of having as good of a game possible before loading into battle, and if you care about performance then you should too. I am not in the normal position of a WoT player here, as these things really matter early on. A playstyle like this is sustained either through spending money on the game, or a heavy amount of skrims before hitting random battles to keep your economy positive throughout. This has very little to do with direct game performance but the economy in WoT is a foundation you should build solid as it'll help prevent the most basic problems for a tryhard mentality. Running out of credits has happened to many, many players before strongholds were a thing. Stronghold skirmishes also solves some of the issues for a good service record, if you want a good overall service record on a tank the crew needs to be good, all modules researched and the best ones mounted before loading into randoms altogether. Radios are debatable but to me it's a matter of principle, if it's better I will run it even if the cost/benefit of researching is incredibly low. Making purchases on sale, stocking up on rations and big kits and so on to the point where it will last you until the next opportunity to do the same is where you'll want to be at or further in your economy. If you can sustain buying all your consumables up front for the entire period when it's on sale and holding off on tanks if they'll be discounted in the foreseeable future, your monetary problems in the game go down by so much. It is a long road to set your economy up that way, as it requires a lot of grinding. You're going from being a customer of consumables and equipment to owning your own depot. If it didn't require a lot of work then everyone would be doing this in the real world too, but it really is the most sensible way of not running into monetary problems as it is one of the biggest issues regarding performance. Not in the performance today, but in your ability to perform in the future. I'm lucky enough to not have to play skirmishes or spend money on the game now. Premium time, clan boosts and personal reserves make for break even or better with discounted consumables in even the most credit hungry tanks (50B, SConq, E 50 etc) with acceptable performance on them. This is probably where the real thread starts but I felt like making note of how much your outside economy matters and how setting it up to supplement you in the future really makes a difference. I am at the end with no problems at all, all tanks bought, equipped and credits are in overflow to the point where I have my next 15k games already paid in advance. Not having problem with credits ever again is a really big thing. For most players seeking to improve however this'd translate to playing a lot of skirmishes, or buying it with real money. Regardless of what you choose, taking steps towards a more sound economic structure along the way is something I really recommend. Eliminating one of the core problems of having an outside economy (unsustainable costs) while still being able to reap the benefits (other people also have unsustainable costs, and as a result they will ultimately perform worse because of it). I think about my game in two ways. The battle I just loaded in to play on its own, and then all the battles I played and will play for the session. For the first, economy doesn't matter. For the second one it does. I'll go more into separating your gameplay into these two later, but it's important to remember through out. Time to start the topic for real: I'll be answering the most commonly asked questions I get regarding improvement, consistency and on keeping an emotional distance and a professional mindset towards the game. I cannot stress this enough: Having a worker-attitude towards the game fixes a lot of anger management issues the game presents you with, but in doing so you'll start sucking out the fun as well. I enjoy the game enough (although in periods) that I still get enjoyment out of playing with a pro-active mindset to improve. This is where a lot of people fall short and it's totally understandable. An improving mindset is a really boring one. You are playing with an improving purpose, and not an enjoyment purpose. I'd say that I enjoy myself the most in a game where I just play and zone out until the game is over. Back in reality, basically a small escape from the real world for a while until you're forced to do whatever the real world requires of you. Thinking of your game in a similar way takes a lot of fun out of it, as being emotionally invested is an obstacle to overcome to reliable results. Luckily I am a competitive person, so I get my enjoyment out of good results, and many people are similar. This means that you treat the game as you would an assignment from a school, employer or whatever. It already sounds a lot less fun. You are playing to improve. This means that every rambo-like feeling you get out of casually playing goes out the window just as fast as the aggressive emotions that many people already struggle with fighting off. You can't be emotionally invested either way, as your emotions will influence your decision making that you want to be as pure in logic and reason as they can. Because of this, you'll want to distance yourself emotionally from the game just like a bad habit in real life. The boss forcing you on overtime means you suck it up even though you're pissed. You are mad because things aren't going the way you wanted and there's no easy fix for that. A worker mindset of adapting to it to the best of your ability and getting better at accepting whatever comes your way to get over it as soon as possible is the best way of dealing with it. This means that everything in the game that is out of your control is something not worth investing into emotionally. This includes everything from being XVM-yoloed, arty-whored or RNG putting a consecutive 4 shots at the edge of reticle. What exactly does an emotional investment get you here? Only fuel to a fire you already want to put out, your emotions are counterproductive right from the get go. This means that you have to let things like these go. They do nothing for improving your current game and only raise the tension for the games to come. Bad experiences from your current game should be left there, with anything positive to take from it should be at least considered. When sporting a working mindset you'll simply structure your gameplay in a way that you keep refining and re-evaluating your decisions and replace your bad tendencies with good ones. This is how I do it: Step 1. This is almost always initial deployment. Make up and decide where to go on the map on the spot after you've read the line-up and estimated the general deployment. Step 1 should at least have some benefits of going there, if it doesn't your step 1 is not good enough. This is everything from favourable terrain, free crossing shots, vision, tank advantage on flank and so on. How much damage is there going to be at step 1? - Try to answer. If you were right, focus on step 2. If you were wrong, think about why. Sometimes this is not taking slow mobility into account, or trading poorly too early etc. Personal misplay is an answer you are going to have to admit a lot of times here, Step 2. What to do after the initial deployment period and the damage it gave. Step 2 and onward is more difficult to give advice on, as they differ much more from step 1 which will remain fairly similar until you decide on a different opening position. Something to consider here however is how aggressive it should be. I base my aggression on urgency. If there is plenty of damage to farm, there's no need to throw your own HP into the mix until you will start losing out on better situations without it or a better position. I think about step 2 as I'm doing step 1. Unlike step 1 it will vary a lot more depending on what is happening on the map, information is scarce early on so step 2 changes often. Having step 2 in place however makes for a pretermined decision to fall back on without any time loss. If step 1 yielded much then step 2 doesn't have to be as aggressive as I'm ahead of pace in my target damage zone. If step 1 yielded little then it'll have to be more aggressive as I now have to compensate. Overcompensating is easy however, and when doing so you need to recognise it as just that, and not teammates being bad. You don't get anything to learn out of your mistake if you blame it on somebody else. Step 3. Step 2 becomes the new step 1, and you think about step 3 the same way you did step 2. The only real difference is that more time has passed in game between them, so the urgency gets higher to hit your target game the longer you go. As you go further into the game the gameplay either ramps up in tempo or massively slows down depending on how the engagements went. A close game slows down, and recognising it as so will let you put the brakes and conserve your HP for enemy mistakes until the game is decided. A steamroll only ramps up in speed, so if you recognise it your need of staying ahead gets higher and higher with time so you adjust your aggression accordingly. Step 4. Use your remaining HP to get as good of a game as possible. I wait with step 4 until the game is noticeably won or lost. Good micromanagement skills net you better games during steamrolls against you with an extra shot or two. When the game is decided, you don't spare any expenses. Survival rate is arbitrary, and I can't recall the last time I saw a good player wish he had a 10% higher survival rate instead of a full shot extra in DPG. If you have a lot of HP to use at this stage then using it to outdamage your teammates is a good idea. When the game is decided, your own HP isn't more valuable than the damage anymore. If the game is won/lost in a seemingly decisive manner, the damage is all that you can get out of it. So squeeze the last drops of it instead of throwing a Hail Mary for the win that virtually never happens anyway. From personal experience I've found that the risky play to win the game is less beneficial to actually winning than playing for the damage. The amount of times you're able to farm your way back into an even HP pool safely are more frequent than winning a lost game off of a Rambo mission. A spot on the map generally takes 10-15 games for me to gauge if they're worthwhile or not, so this is quite a bit more of testing the waters than what people assume. The meta changes, so you can't have a fixed handbook for what to do on every map even if the initial deployment is similar. With it you find many solutions to the situation you're in right now, one you will be in later and eventually you come up with a solid enough answer to everything on that area of the map that you'll start consistently having good games throughout. The more the better honestly, but I generally play tanks with little to no armour, so my focus has is around having a good damage dealt/taken ratio. For people more seasoned in slower and armoured tanks this focus would be more on micromanagement and perfecting your initial deployment. Lower mobility means less ability to rotate, so getting better at prediction and foresight hold more value the lower mobility you have. I talked a bit about emotion and how it's an obstacle for improvement, but there's still more to it to add. Shifting blame. I do this myself and almost every streamer I watch do it too, because accepting blame is difficult. You won't get anything out of a mistake if you blame it on anyone but yourself. It really is a lot of excusing misplay with platitudes in WoT. Arty, XVM and so on screwed your game over for taking an aggressive position. A lot of people write these things off as arty just being arty when in reality they were overreaching. I had this problem a lot when translating from the 3k to 4k barrier. You need to take a breath, get some perspective and look at the situation again. Did you really die because of some BS or were you actually misplaying? If it's BS you can let go of it as those things really are out of your control sometimes, but you're doing yourself a disservice if you let a mistake to learn from go by unnoticed. It's important to hold yourself accountable for your gameplay and if you really do want to improve this is a barrier that is a must to get over or it'll hinder all learning past this point in a fairly cerebral game that requires an understanding of the game that is too complex to put into proper words. There's a fairly good reason most people plateau at some point, and while that plateau is lower in general I can say with certainty that close to every (already) unicum hit a wall because of this. You are fairly confident in considering yourself decent at the game at this point, and your ego is in your way of improvement more than anything else. Tilting's also very common and I envy the very few who seem to be totally unaffected by it. A good mindset really helps here, as you'll see some of the few people who can live off of WoT content that have to keep playing for their income learnt this too. Most people do have the ability to quit whenever their anger gets the better of them, but when you are literally doing your job while playing you don't. Tilting ruins the rest of the session unless you untilt which is easier said than done, so you do whatever you can from preventing tilt from happening from the start. As I said earlier you really have to give up your emotional investment in both performance and outcome. It just doesn't yield anything positive from a performance perspective. Finding a way to un-tilt is good though if you insist on keeping the session going. For me the session ends whenever I notice myself being emotionally invested, both good and bad. If I load up, have a killer game and felt like I really enjoyed that game then that game is it. I had fun, although for a very short time, and then this session won't be a pro-active one forward if I decide to keep on playing anyway. It's important to separate the two, especially when they're so closely linked together for elitists (performance and fun go very hand in hand for me). If you want to learn then emotions can't get the better of you. If you are having fun while playing that's great, but you're also zoning in and going autopilot which is the biggest single detriment to improvement there is. Unlearning auto-pilot is something that would do every online PC gamer a favour in their gameplay by forcing them to re-learn actively (and onward) instead of only learning periodically and then sticking to what they know. You can obviously enjoy yourself while being a productive learner, but it's much, much harder than it looks. If you want to become better at the game you have to learn, and "having to do" something generally makes it a lot less fun even if it's with your goal in mind. My ways of keeping my head straight when I had a bad game, am dead and waiting for my tank that are pretty simple and easy to do. They do the trick for me most of the time, and when they don't I simply quit the session and come back at it with fresh eyes later. I generally only play 1 tank at a time, so this works well for me since I have a game to wait out before my next one. I generally try and watch all my games until they are completed because there's more to take from them after dying. Timestamping - Track rotations and how long they take for other players. If you know how long a rotation takes you can estimate how much will happen in that timespan and how a situation will look when you get there. Just look at the timer at the start and then again when you have what you're looking for. If a rotation is 40-ish seconds, it is for example a perfect rotation for a BC25t after a clip. It matters more on autoloaders since you have a longer string of dead time without being able to deal damage. Knowing this in autoloaders make for much better predictability and an increase in effeciency. If your BC just went on reload and you see a rotation to make that could be good, you have the information on hand that you will be reloaded when getting there. You can deal damage right away. The time spent reloading was spent being useful because you rotated in a situation where you wouldn't deal any damage anyway. Track trading patterns too if you can. Some tanks are tricky to trade against because of their reload timers are off-sync compared to yours. Russian mediums for example can shoot 3 times at a Type 5 on reload before he's reloaded again. If you know this you know how hard you can pressure without risking taking HP back. If you are against a 5A in a russian medium however the reload is off-sync, as you'll be halfway through your third shell when he reloads his second. If he fires and pulls back there, you end up losing the trade at 980 to 640. This means that you don't really have a way to use your RoF as a means of engaging that 5A when there's cover involved. Find a different way or take the bad trade if there's no other way. This is where playing a single tank at a time starts benefitting as these things are much easier to keep track of comparing against the 1 gun (yours) than all tanks. You can do this for pretty much everything, but when playing tanks with higher alpha it matters as single shot trades get more beneficial. A JGPZ wins almost every 1 for 1 trade, so for it to take them makes more sense than a russian medium that will get outtraded. Backseat gaming. I do this to both streamers I watch and to team mates when I'm post mortem. It probably goes without saying that I don't actually tell them what I think, I just try to backseat them in my head to keep my thought process going to learn. You start noticing how big the gap is and how much skill expression there is in the game by doing this, as methodical decision making is so much easier to spot than someone auto-piloting. It's tricky because things don't play out like you want them to to check if you were right, but you can easily mess with ideas and try to emulate a reasonable outcome out of it. I've gotten everything from good openings (mostly from streamers though), to good counters and responses from random pubbies this way that I didn't think of. They probably didn't think of it either, but I saw it work out so I can make use of it. The biggest use of it is probably that I've identified a lot of bad choices and having been attentive during it you will end up avoiding a lot of mistakes you haven't made yet. WoT is a PvP game but I found that treating it as PvE makes more sense. One player and 14 bots against 15 bots make for a more sensible way of looking at performance which shifts the focus from a team effort to win, to a player effort in a numbers game. You are alone and your teammates are no good, now do your best anyway. Consistency needs a solid foundation to build on. and for me this is the general thought process of how I did it. It takes long, but eventually it adds up to being important. The step from 4k to 5k and above was the biggest leap in gameplay for me, and easily the most difficult to approach. The difference between it and the previous level of gameplay was mostly consistency. I'd say that an easy way to put it was that now my median and average game are similar. This wasn't true before, were my median game was almost always higher than my average because of a game here and there going pretty bad. What working through this did for me was raising my average game up to my median, simply having less bad games while the ratio of acceptable to great games stayed the same. This change isn't much more than 500 damage in tier 10s, but it still matters. For me it was the last bit to focus on in the game, and having experience with it - the improvement never ends. I see so many mistakes in my own play in hindsight that I'll keep working on to remove. To me the game isn't at its most competitive state right now, as a constant 3 arties make for much worse experiences in tier 10 where I generally reside so right now I can't say that my improvement has yielded very much recently, but it did lay the ground work for a better time to come. Consistency for example is the only reason I was able to 3mark the ISU-130. The tank on the EU server has 20 or so owners, with none of them playing actively. In attempting the mark over a year ago I just couldn't break past the 90 mark reliably. The damage requirement of a 3500 combined average was simply too high for me to keep with tank tank. I was the only one playing it until skill4ltu got his as well, so the EMA of the ISU-130 mark was set almost entirely by myself until then. We both wound up just waiting it out. The issue I had was with consistency yet again, as I was struggling with finding a way to get reliable damage out when your penetration is worst in tier. (It's a high DPM/alpha TD with okay gun handling and mobility, while having a non-existent gun arc and very low penetration for those of you who don't know of it). I eventually wound up getting it done, but after taking a very long break from it. Just like all of the challenging gun marks this game has to offer with their reward tanks the consistency is what breaks most players. Having to pressure the game for so much damage so reliably makes single mistakes ruin several hours of work, so you can't make mistakes at this level. A lot of players have been bashing their wall against the Chieftain mark lately, and it's because of the same thing. Consistency matters so much when you are basically forced to either have a good game or re-play your last 10 games getting back to where you were. That's what it did for me in the ISU at least, being more aware, having learned more and approaching the game from a PoV based in logic and reason rather than using your gut and autopilot made the push. There's plenty of small pointers here and there to improve your game, but IMO this is the big one that sets you up well. If you have the work ethic to keep learning, you'll become more consistent. Eventually more consistent starts meaning better.

I've been thinking about this, and theres no one real reason that I've been playing this game a lot less. Its a whole pile of different reasons that have added up to make the game as a whole much less fun, and I thought Id share my own thoughts and opinions on what these problems are. Spoiler alert: Artillery isn't one of them, yeah its annoying but Its been in the game since launch and I still found the game plenty fun despite it over the last 8 years I've been playing. NOTE: EVERYTHING HERE IS MY OWN PERSONAL OPINION, YOUR OPINION MAY DIFFER WARNING: MEGA GIANT WALL OF TEXT Vehicle Balance: Im going to start off with The biggest elephant in the room, and my biggest reason. Overall vehicle balance. IMO, balance between vehicles was at its peak around late 2015-mid 2016ish. Its been downhill from there really. Yeah back then the overbuffed E5 existed and the WTE100 was cancer. but those were two outliers, these days the whole game is out of whack. Each new patch consists of new tanks that seem more stupid than the last. (this section may not be in correct chronological order) The Type 5 Heavy with the derp gun was, in my eyes, one of the beginnings of this. Along with the mass removal of weakspots from everything. They Nerfed the E5 and then released the Super conq which was, and still is, as good or better in every single way to the overbuffed E5. the overbuffed E5 would still be considered pretty bad in the current meta. Now then, what could possibly be better than the Super conq? I know! A tank that is literally better than the super conq at everything, except It also does all the things the E5 could of possibly hoped to do better than the super conq even better than that! (like mobility) Enter the Chieftain. It being a CW reward is both good and bad. good because every mouthbreather can't get one and thus theres less of them. bad because it instantly became the meta in CW, pushed the SC out, and you have to have one in a top clan now. They then released the 268v4, which single handedly completely destroyed my desire to play this game. It has never returned to the levels it was before the V4 was released. Im sure everyone remembers, but clan wars became "whoever has the most 268v4s wins, regardless of strategy" it was the most cancer period I've ever seen in this game in my life. And then they nerfed it. barely. they gave it a slap on the wrist. Thankfully it stopped that retarded clan wars meta, however the tank is still grossly Overpowered and needs far more extensive nerfs. Fuck that thing. Meanwhile, I have a special hate for the entire swedish line. the entire fucking line is the most cancer, horrible to play against, gimmick tree they have ever released, and honestly IMO the game would be better if they just flat out deleted the entire nations tree. The Kranvagn is the least cancer, but is still more cancer than most other autoloaders. the STRVs are all absolute cancer tanks that can't do anything except camp and punish people for daring to be aggressive and try and push with their fuck you DPM, fuck you camo, and fuck anyone with a sub 120mm gun armour. They are still my most despised tank in the game. And now the new medium line is out. all of which are completely fucking flat, you can't hit them to save your live, and regardless of how objectively good or bad they are to play, they are just, so far in my experience, completely unfun to play AGAINST. The Wheeled vehicles. I knew, before any stats had even been released, just from WGs first ever description of what they were planned to be, they would be cancer. And they are. they flat out destroy the game IMO. they're disgusting. they're double disgusting for me, who has to try and hit the fucking things with 200 ping. destroying a wheel doesn't even slow them down. They may be fun to play but they're absolutely destructive for gameplay. They never should of been added. They're too fast, they get their own Autoaim+ (a banned mod lol) I've seen them regularly pull off shots doing 70kph that even in a 140/62A would never been possible, from ranges you'd almost never even bother taking on the move shots at. They're a pain in the ass. Lets add to this other honourable mentions, like the 430U/430 which both are stupid with heavy tank armour and medium mobility. The 257 which is unpennable from the side for no reason, the IS-3A and Progettos which are just annoying as fuck to fight. Its a running thing now, regardless of how objectively good or bad the tank is, none of these things are fun to actually play against. Premiums! Now, WG seems to have one or two stances on prems these days. Either its an extremely boring, meh tank, or its fucking OP as shit. its disgusting. the T26E5 was the start, the defender was the turning point. and nowadays, If you see a prem or any tank that has had supertest stats released, theres a 95% chance that tank is coming to live, with little to no changes. Its like the super testers aren't even testing these things. This doesn't even apply only to prems, its applying to everything, which is made even more ridiculous because any person can take one look at the prelimentary stats and immediately deduce that said tank will be OP as shit without even playing it. Which leads me on to my next topic... Rebalancing. Yeah, Im extra salty about this part for reasons Im sure you guess. WG can't just slightly buff or nerf a tank (but mainly buff it seems) they have to try and completely redesign how the tank plays. pointlessly. yes, you know what im talking about. the STB-1. Its already been said, but all it needed was some small buffs to make it more comfortable to play. a turret buff, a gun handling buff. boom done. but instead they had to completely redesign it. Right now, regardless of whether it is actually objectively more capable as a tank, what it is now is just more complicated, and less fun to play. This alone has killed off a large portion of my remaining desire to play the game, the STB was always my fun tank. Playing it for me was always just an enjoyable experience. (which is why I didnt bother 3 marking it for ages because 3 marking is for me, extremely frustrating and completely unfun, in a tank that I normally used to destress) The Currrent STB doesn't do that now. its slower and more complicated. Way less fun. Anyway, back to rebalancing. the STB isn't the only tank they've done this to. They keep revisiting older tanks that just need a small amount of love (although in reality is all the new OP tanks need nerfs) and instead try to needlessly redesign how they play completely. Which makes the game less fun because everything keeps getting changed. And then they bring out new tanks like that ST-II on supertest. that thing is gonna be disgusting, at least it will be to play against. I hope to god it doesn't come out remotely close to that, if at all, but with WGs track record over the last few years Im not optimistic. Maps Maps have gotten less fun as well. Each time they redesign a map It feels worse IMO. for example pilsen, which needed some work but wasn't bad, got redesigned and its current design is absolutely terrible. the entire field is a complete shitshow and is utterly pathetic, while it used to be a pretty fun place to fight. so more than a third of the map is now worthless ground. the middle area was already worthless and still is, so thats another third of the map useless ground. and now we have the 1-2 line in the factories, which isn't useless but they've made it way harder to push or be effective in it. So now its not a remotely fun place to fight. the entire map is a shit show. its one of my banned maps (along with paris) Along with this, Highway, a map I always liked, is now worse. the redesign in the NW corner with the field is worse and now massively favours the north, with souths defensive positions all being way more exposed to fire and getting lit than before, with norths not being changed. the buildings around the north aren't exactly fun places to fight, terrain based fighting is more interesting than building peekaboom wars. New Maps all suck as well. Studzikani needs no introduction, Minsk is like 80% unusable ground with only a few areas being pushable. Neither of them are very fun to play. Ghost town worked in CW, but doesn't work in pubs. Its not a very fun map to play in pubs IMO, mainly because of the coordination required to win it that just doesn't exist in pubs. along with this, the 1.0 redesign of a lot of maps just made them worse or less fun to play on. TD camping bushes or ridges added where they can easily punish anyone trying to actually push or do anything other than camp. Routes that used to be possible are now impossible. (things like dropping off hills and such which now just kill you) - I always hated boosts that allowed you into areas meant to be inaccessible. but going from one accessible area to another is okay IMO, It removed a lot of escape routes and made risk taking far more punishing. thus no one wants to take risks anymore. Clan Wars I can give you the tank comp for 90% of the maps we play in the next campaign right here: 260, Chieftain, 907, EBR, CGC. Sprinkle on the occasional STRV or T100, maybe an IS-7 or a 268v4. Theres little variation, or creativity any more. I mean of course there isn't those tanks are all the best and using any other will just cause you to lose. But its not very fun. This isn't the fault of the clans, its the fault of WG for making tanks so much better than the others. I can't even use my 140 in CW unless there are literally no more unlocked 907s because the 907 is just that much better than the 140 (needlessly I might add) WG was talking about changing CW. This is, IMO, the biggest change it needs. make creative tank comps great again. Even the batchat has been out metad, a tank at one point I never thought would be outmetad. Personal There is the next problem, because I don't play as often any more, I get rusty. so Im playing worse, which frustrates me, which makes me want to play less because Im getting annoyed that I can't play at a level I know I am capable of. Which makes me play even worse on tilt. I need to get over this just by playing more and un rusting but its a vicious cycle, and all the other aforementioned issues are also making me frustrated. so bleh. Thats about it for now. All of these things are, individually, fairly small. but together they just create a pile of compounding issues that generally make the game much less fun than it was. And the problem is, Even if WG started fixing them all right now. and fixed them how (for simplicity sake) I personally would like to see them fixed, It would take them years to get the game back into a good position. New Patches these days don't bring me excitement. they bring me dread as to what they've fucked up this time. So yeah. wall of text. This took me like 45 mins to write, I have an exam tomorrow, and I should be studying. go me.

Hello! Serverwide tank statistics are now available. On the front page you will now see an additional box next to the Server Stats with the top 10 tanks in average battles. Clicking the link below the list will take you to the full statistics page where you can sort and filter, as well as see a number of statistics related to the tank. "Complete Tank Statistics" will take you to the full statistics page: I'm still working on expanding this page to show graphs showing player preference by tiers, nations, classes, as well as the server's performance in each. Hope you guys enjoy it!

Hello! A new feature has been released on WoTLabs. Now you can see a detailed list of all the tanks that you played during the 24 hour, 7 days, 30 days, 60 days and Recent periods. At the last row of each column, you will see an option to show the breakdown for that period. Using this, players can identify problem areas more easily, allowing them to see exactly which tank is having the most impact on their performance. Hope you guys like it!

So, I went and did this for myself last year... And, since they're doing the same thing again, this year (II-V 100% off, VI 80%, VII 60%, VIII 50%, IX 40%, X 30%), let's see if anything has changed with the new nations. Please remember that all numbers will be what you net in profit unless otherwise stated. There may be tanks close to the leader/runner(s) up, but I'm using the rough rule of "close enough for Errants to mention", and not a hard and fast percentage for almost making the cut. Tier II - H35 - 2.1k - Still the winner, though the runners' up have changed... Runner(s) up - M14/41 @ 2.05k, and 7TP @ 1.975k. You also have the following all at 1.95k: Strv m/38, VAE Type B, Chi-Ni, LT vz. 35, FCM 36, Loyd GC, and UC 2-pdr Tier III - SU-26 - 26.5k - Unchanged Runner(s) up - Any other arty are 22.5k - 25.5k. Those vehemently anti-arty can lose out on at least 3k with the following: Type 91 @ 23.25k, Pz 1 C @ 22.9k, M15/42 @ 22.7k, and Chi-Ha @ 22.5k Tier IV - B1 - 92.5k - Unchanged Runner(s) up - D.W. 2 @ 85k, Type 95 @ 83k, VK 20.01 D @ 78.5k, St.Pz. II @ 78k, and SARL 42 or Luchs @ 77.5k Tier V - O-I Exp. - 222.5k - Unchanged Runner(s) up - T1 Heavy @ 217.5k, Type T-34 @ 215k, AT 2 @ 212.5k, and StuG III G @ 211k Tier VI - M4A3E2 "Jumbo" - 195k purchase, 487.5k sale, 292.5k net - Unchanged Runner(s) up - Churchill GC @ 289.5k, and Hellcat or O-I @ 285k Tier VII - O-Ni - 596k purchase, 745k sale, 149k net - Unchanged Runner(s) up - T29, IS-2, and 45TP all @ 145k, or Crusader SP, Chi-Ri, T-34-2G FT, and P.43 ter @ 144k So, for a total cost of 791k, you'll get back 1.5761m, or a net profit of 785.1k... Wow. Not that great, but making money. Again, we're already in the rabbit hole, so let's look at the higher tiers, and try to get the biggest savings (and see how much of our profit we lost)! Tier VIII - FV207 - 2.73m base, 1.365m purchase/sale, net 0 - Unchanged Runner(s) up (base costs listed) - SU-14-2 (2.72m); M40/43 (2.7m); T28 Prot., G.W. Tiger P, and AT 15 (all 2.65m); UDES 03 (2.62m); T32 (2.61m); 110 and 53TP (2.6m) Tier IX - 212A and Type 4 Heavy - 2.22m purchase, 1.85 sale, 370k loss net - Unchanged Runner(s) up (cost/loss following sale) - Foch (2.202m/367k); Obj. 704 (2.196m/366k); M103 (2.184m/364k); G.W. Tiger, Conqueror, Type 61, and Strv 103-0 all @ 2.16m/316k Tier X - They're all 6.1m, so 4.27m cost regardless. And if you're selling a Tier X... I dunno what to tell you, but I shouldn't be advising your actions. So, the new lines didn't shake up the best choices, but the ITL and PL tanks did make a showing, consistently, in the runner-up category. Might not be a bad option, in general, if you throw your discounts at either one of those lines. Assuming you've not started up them. Finally, we come to the reason I did this the first time, figuring where to spend my discounts on tanks I've not bought yet. Again, that shit will go into spoilers, because this thing is long enough as is.

Hello! As part of a larger update that will enable global tank statistics on WoTLabs, we can also now show the Marks of Excellence that you have achieved on your vehicles. In order for your Marks of Excellence to be displayed, WoTLabs will need to update your statistics, which can only happen after cache clears (usually after 12 hours after the last update) and if you've played one or more battles since the last update, so if your marks aren't yet showing up, this might be the reason why. Hope you guys enjoy it, and stay tuned for more!

Hello! So all that I'm gonna talk about here happened last night over a period of around 4 hours. This post is VERY wordy and somewhat rambly, so be warned. First things first, I'm working on a new feature that will let you see a "Period Breakdown" of each period, so for the period of, say, 24 hours, you will be able to see all the tanks that are counting in that column, along with each tank's individual stats for that period. But in creating this feature, I ran into a problem where there were massive discrepancies between the amount of battles that the Account Information method provided, and the sum of the battle count of your tanks. For instance, the difference between your overall battle count between the latest update and the one 24 hours ago might have been of 20 battles, but if took the battles played by each tank over this same period and added them up, the number would sometimes be different. Sometimes they were off by just a couple of battles, sometimes by 10 or more. This is obviously a great issue for a website that is supposed to provide statistical accuracy. I believe that what causes this issue is that not all of the methods of the API are updated all at once, so when the system grabs your stats, your overall battle count updated, but not your individual tank statistics. Again, that's just me throwing a possibility out there, I'd have to talk to someone who has access to the API to know for sure, and I have no idea who that might be. The way I fixed this was simple: We stopped relying on the overall numbers, and started deriving everything from the sum of each individual tank's statistics. That's what's used to calculate your WN8 already, so it's a logical step. As for potential issues, the only problem should arise in the fairly uncommon case where a tank takes a long time to be added to the API, so players would play several battles in a tank over a period of time that would all get lumped together under the "24 Hours" column once the tank's information got added to the API and WoTLabs could actually see what tank you were playing all along. But the thing is, this issue already happens! It's just masked because the numbers that were shown in the columns were based on those overall numbers which always get updated. The only place where you could see this issue happening was in your Average Tier and WN8 calculations, which several players have noticed and reported on this forum. WIth the now fully functioning system that automatically checks and updates tank information once a day and no longer relies on me checking for new tanks manually, this should be an even more uncommon case. With that fixed, the feature that allows you to see a detailed list of the tanks played during a certain period will be released very soon! Whew, that was a long one. Now, for the last topic of discussion: Why my Recent WN8 took a nosedive, and why yours (in very rare cases) might as well: Back in May 2016, we had to create a new table to hold all the detailed tank information (which is the data used to calculate WN8) since the original one could no longer perform its duty. The old table remained behind for historical queries, but as time went on and disk space became an issue, very old data started to be deleted, including those very old records that were no longer relevant... Or were they? Drama aside, if you're like me and you played very few battles between May 2016 and now, your Recent WN8 might have taken a nosedive. Recent WN8, as you probably know, is based on your last 1000 battles. When the system checked for the update made 1000 (or close to 1000) battles ago, it would take the timestamp and look for the tank information so it could calculate the WN8 for this period. However, if this update happened before May 2016, then there are no more tank information stored! This means that the system was actually using your overall tanks to calculate your Recent WN8, making them look very similar to each other, as was my case. The way this was fixed was to tell the system to ignore every update made before May 2016, and only look for those made after that point. If you played over 1000 battles between May 2016 and now, no problem at all! if not, then the closest update that has tank information available will be used. In my case it's my last 428 battles, which unfortunately encompasses the 370 battles that I've played in the past month since coming back to the game and sucking really, really bad. So yeah, RIP my Recent WN8, but at least it's not a lie anymore. That is all for now! If you made it this far, sorry for all the words. I really, really like to write. Cheers!

Hello! You can now see a complete breakdown of your WN8 by tank Nation, Class and Tier. Hope you guys enjoy it, cheers!

Official forums are that way, take your shitpoasts there.

I own a defender and they can nerf it as much as they fucking want if it means the game becomes balanced again. Thats not called ripping people off, its called making the game fucking playable so it doesnt die and leave you with NO tank to play with.

yeah but i have pretty much all your dpgs beat so who's really the champ here

I added this as a featured article on WoTLabs. The link to it will appear pinned at the top of every page. Great article!

This is a topic instead of an update simply because there isn't a thread on it yet and sharing information could be good on these mechanics so was thinking that it could be a general thread for this mechanic in particular. I don't actually have anything of value to share besides some trivia on how they coded it. I was watching Niall play the EBR, and if you activate the boost mode mid-air your speedometer increases but you don't actually accelerate. Obviously you shouldn't, but it does mean that they used IRL mechanics of a speedometer similar to cars where your speedometer is linked to your tire rotation, and that the km/h increase is because the tires don't have resistance during flight so they simply rotate faster. Also, boost on aggressive slopes and you'll easily clear 50m in air, you can make it from the Glacier ship into the water on the south side which is over a 150m jump to clear. This is absolutely ridiculous. At range these tanks also move too fast that to hit a shot with a slow shell velocity (E 100, FV4005 and so on) in x8 sniper mode your turret either moves too slowly, your bloom resets because of how aggressively forward you have to aim to lead, or you have to aim in x4 because your lead has to be so much that you can't actually see the tank in x8, and close up your turret rotation doesn't hold up to catch them. More gamebreaks, at least you make arty players quit arty by yoloing them into quitting the class altogether since nobody'll be able to hit you for shit. On test server I've made it to arty alive and killed it without the enemy being able to shoot me while driving straight through them all with some minor turns. There's also supposed rumours (have yet to see any myself though) that using this to boost yourself on top of buildings can break the game and make you clip into them xD 1.4 will be the patch that kills the last shred of competitiveness the game had you get stupid stuff like this, on the brightside doing races on maps and trying to do certain flips is kinda fun, but this is game is not WoT anymore when these tanks come into the game

I don't mind one bit. In fact, I'll cheer and sing praises if they nerf Defenders and IS3As and I own these things, because I am a fucking stupid idiot, like everyone who got these things.

I'm playing T49 so I don’t get it

To prove that arty is hard to play I've decided to run two WoT clients of test server and simultaneously play two arty battles. Never again. I'm not a super human to do it one more time. That focus, this skill. I've almost shit my pants because of stress. Check video and please, don't do it to yourself.

Seriously though I and Im pretty sure almost no one here has any real issues with you We just want to know what the hell is up with the 0 key, and the more you completely avoid it the more curious and more meme prone we get over it. Theres literally nothing wrong with most of what you post, no more than anyone else here. Its just the damn 0 key man and I dont know why you are so adament on avoiding just telling us whats up with that to the point where you literally type out one hundred over 100 or even 1OO and go and re edit the Os to posts I edited them to be 0s lol.

Should be like this:

Just throwing out a shout out to you all, I have played the game for a few games now and decided i need to get better so I came here to learn. i am always looking for a mentor to learn and coach me. If i am going to be in this game I definitely want to be the best I can. Thanks all, sorry for any future dumb questions

pm me

if only there was some way to look at win rate separately from wn8

It's like they finally added a vehicle branch specifically for the purpose of jumping the shark.

So I decided to see how audio modding is with the current version of WoT and decided to create a small mod that replaces the crew voiceover for killing an enemy tank with this little gem. The inspiration for this was shishx, who uses this effect in his videos; however, he does not use a mod for that but rather adds it himself during video post-processing. Since I haven't been able to find any mod that replicates this functionality, I decided to create this myself and upload it here in case someone else wanted to have a few laughs as well. The kill voiceover is replaced for all nations. Especially fun if you're playing: Large boomsticks, esp KV-2 AMX 40 artillery In general sound modding seems to be pretty straightforward nowadays and the engine is quite versatile. quack.rar

Hello! As users of PadderBot may be aware, he has been dead for quite a while. To be honest, he was doomed from the start. PadderBot was a bit of a hackjob using mIRC and mIRC Scripting. While this is fine for a single-channel bot, PadderBot was supposed to be in multiple channels at once, and once you pass the 30 or 40 channel mark, mIRC starts to get bogged down quite a bit. Eventually it became too much for the poor IRC client and small Windows virtual server to handle and things went down for good. However, I've created a nifty little alternative if you still want to have statistics functionality on your channel. Using Nightbot, you can easily add a custom command that will grab the player's statistics directly from WoTLabs and display them on your stream's chat in the same way that PadderBot did. You can add the command by typing the following into your channel's chat: !commands add !stats $(urlfetch http://wotlabs.net/padderbot/?query=$(querystring)) After that, all you have to do is type !stats [server] [player] and Nightbot will return the player's informations. Example: Supported servers are: na eu asia ru And that's it! Hope you guys enjoy it! Also, there will be new things on WoTLabs going forward. Stay tuned.

If these go live and my 152mm T49 becomes unplayable i'm unironically quitting the game permanently Fuck this

Command & Conquer intensifies

i dont see how extending a simple symmetry into a complex one has absolutely anything whatsoever to do with this but if you care to elaborate im all ears on what you wrote though it really doesn't matter, if you are good enough to 3mark them without gold you are good enough to perform well above with it so why don't you? this is the game and your attitude towards it doesn't make sense since 3 marking is a competitive element to the game, and if you dont want to load gold then you're gimping yourself which goes against every sort of competition in history lol if you care about 3 marks but still hold to your pub retard gold sucks values you are a walking paradox my friend

490 alpha, yet it has 1850 DPM (more than a lot of old 320-390 alpha heavies, more than VK 100, Mauerbrecher, Defender, MORE THAN SOME 240 ALPHA TIER 8 MTs) accuracy isn't even godawful for the alpha, it's more accurate than any of those 440 alpha tier 8 heavies wtf 0.19 / 0.19 / 0.14 bloom is pretty disgusting considering that it's pretty slow too, it has better bloom than VK 100 again and that already doesn't have THAT bad gun handling for the alpha, wtf good penetration as well, shell velocity is also less potato than other 128s in the tier turret armor, if it really is that thick with that shape, is arguably better than VK B at tier 9 it's also faster than VK B lmao. In fact, with actually rather decent terrain resists and 12 hp/ton, it's going to hit 30 easily, and it has that typical German 15kph reverse speed too knowing the armor layout of the VK B and Pz VII, it probably has strong LFP too so it doesnt even have frontal weakspots (and that cupola is probably going to be VK 100 v2.0 except its even smaller), and if UFP is 180 mm thick it's going to be around 270 effective or something It's a VK B that loses 20mm side armor, 20mm frontal armor, some penetration, tiny bit of DPM, accuracy and view range, to gain better shell velocity, better mobility, better bloom when moving (lol) and arguably better turret armor. It seems kinda fair at first, but the problem is... ...I'm comparing a tier 8 with a tier 9. Armor layout is going to ultimately judge how stupid the tank actually is but if the LFP is anywhere near 200 mm effective, then GG It seems so stupidly broken atm that I really, really feel like they are going to nerf it (at least the alpha...why does it need a 128, giga-alpha isn't even the main thing of the line, just give it Tiger II's gun or something). WG really hasn't introduced super-P2W premiums in a long time (especially now that Murazor is gone); their recent premiums (other than omegalul buffed IS-3A and possibly some other tanks too) are actually somewhat well balanced. I guess they need to fix that by introducing the next generation bullshit tank. Part of me thinks that this will probably be the next marathon tank; this or the new Skoda.

Well, I finally did it. After 564 games, I finally put enough good ones in a row to get the mark. Also, a screenshot with digi-camo, which I decided to put on it since it's my most played tank. I don't have a screenshot of the final battle since my game crashed while I was loading back to the garage, but it was 8.8k combined. Overall, it was quite a journey. I've learned a lot and become a lot better at the tank. When I first got it, I couldn't figure it out. Luckily, someone pointed me here, where I learned to play it. It is now my most played tank in the game, and will always be one of my favorites. Thank you to all here for the advice, information, replay reviews, and everything else.

This game is finally one of those old MMOs where you haven't played in years... and when you finally log in you're immediately showered with a daily crate, the returning player MEGA crate, 2 special missions reminders, +300 Cow Coins, A Quantum bonus to gem rotations, and +30% to all prestige points for 24 hours.

So I played a few... -Physics vastly improved, no more fear of flipping. -Arty can't drown themselves. -No gold ammo spam. -Shitlords can't snapshot you at 300m due to accuracy decrease; bloom matters a lot more. -Environments are nice and clean instead of cluttered where it's hard to aim and move. -Lower aimtimes across the board feels better. -Can't get gold so there's zero pay to win factor anywhere. -Extremely fast advancement as opposed to painfully long grinds to equip vehicles. -Lack of crew skill variety means no grinding for eternities to have a competitive crew. -Buffs to TDs countered by decreased accuracy and lower zoom which makes long range fire less effective. -No battle stats screen after game means you don't have to see how abysmal every one actually is. -Lack of mods keeps everything even. Now, there's a lot I think is a bad idea. Arty's too strong, tank balance seems rough, and I'm not sure why they changed graphic engines again, this one seems like a big downgrade. But overall, pretty good patch with a lot of overdue improvements.

I can't help but see this as an attempt to try to contrast the old game with the new to remind every one of all the improvements they have made. The problem is so many of the improvements weren't improvements. The old physics where you were stuck to the ground were actually way better for gameplay because while they weren't realistic you also didn't have to constantly worry about flipping, falling, suicide bombers, or some fuck on your own team shoving you into water. 1.0 looked nice graphically but smoothing terrain made flipping even worse, while all the new eye candy crap littering the maps makes it harder to see and shoot. A lot of changes they've made really weren't better, they just made the game look better.

I don't know what game people are playing when they talk about using HE or HESH, the game I play there's too much fucking 1.0 eye candy garbage littering most of the maps to get a shot on anything anyway. The last time a fencepost turned a 320 damage shot into 0 was when I stripped HE off virtually all of my tanks.

for you that have trouble understanding armor layouts of tanks, I have put together a small but helpful guide as to why your shells may not always do damage even when doing crits on low armor tanks! I have had to reroll 5x, and play tens of thousands of matches til I got hardly blue stats to understand the intricate system of armor in this game. Here we have a pubby pershing, a typical specimen of the game world of tanks. You as a slightly above average skill player think, oh boy lets get that damage! So where do you aim? lets aim at the lowest part of the tank and try to track him! good boy, you surely will track him and get your goodboy spotting points while damaging him. you fire, but oh no what's this? you not only didn't damage him, you didn't even track him! His track absorbed that module damage, and the shell had a trajectory below the actual hull of the tank. better luck next time fellow unicum.

Your list would be much shorter if you mark good players. Just assume everyone is an idiot until proven otherwise, because that's usually the case.

Remember when this forum used to be a chill safeplace from all the idiots from official forums and in-game? Good times... Also this Dirizon dude really should fix his zero-key

why yes I can....and did.

Hello! If you have been in a clan's page in WoTLabs recently, you probably noticed a slight change in how the clan's WN8 is displayed. While previously there was a single number, now two are shown. The one shown in larger font is the pure average WN8 of every member in the clan, while the second, shown in smaller font directly under the pure average, is what was up until now the "default". This value which we call a battle-weighed value also takes into account the number of battles each player has. The goal of this was to prevent a clan from padding their average WN8 by including several accounts with a low battle count and extremely high WN8. As you know, WN8 as a metric is only really useful after a certain number of games, usually at the very least a couple thousand. Playing a few battles in low tier tanks and stacked with premium options could easily result in an unrealistically high WN8, which would then be weighed as much as someone with 20 thousand battles under their belt, thus skewing the clan's ratings. However, this method also caused a problem where players with very high battle counts could also skew the results, this time downwards, therefore showing numbers that don't properly reflect the clan's overall performance. To solve this, I have added both numbers to the page, with the most prominent one being pure average WN8, and the battle-weighed WN8 shown directly beneath. This should give players more information to make informed decisions when it comes to choosing a clan to apply to. That is all for now, cheers!

Tell me whats up with your 0 key and Ill let you insult him as much as you want unmoderated. (By me, cant speak for other mods)

Variant A) You get your ammo rack blown up. Variant B) While circle-strafing the Manticore, and laughing your ass off, you drive off a cliff.

Just wanna document my proudest ever setup on a butt shot: (1) It all happened on Erlenburg South spawn, about 1 min into battle. I was in the city looking for shots when I noticed that because our heavies were making hardcore pressure, Cent AX wanted to escape. He could either run towards me, or retreat along the riverbanks. (2) For reasons that would make sense in a moment, I wanted to "convince" him to come across the bridge. So I put an HE round to his turret for 300 something dmg. (3) My boy Cent AX was not amused. I successfully attracted his attention, and he decided to cross the bridge. Of course, he couldn't find me at the other end... (4) As our heavies pushed, he was momentarily distracted by sideshot opportunities. This was the moment I hoped for: feelsgud

STB-1 Gun Changes are ass. the better aimtime helps you not miss as many close range shots, but it still derps the fuck out at range the lower alpha is shit and often lets people simply out-trade you.The siege mode dosent work on this tank, it sucks not having the -10 gun depression all the time and the -5-6 on the sides is limiting. and overall the UDES/M48 is a better option at this point if your looking for a ridge line medium. the engine buffs are decent and let you maintain 50 across most terrain alot of the time The turret changes are very good and quite noticeable, your able to bounce a fair amount of shots especially compared to before. but its worth noting that its not immune by any means and can still be 22'd most of the time. Leopard 1 Gun changes are nice actually. The 278 APCR is amazing and having 323 APCR as gold is much more fitting for its "sniper" role the higher alpha IMO is nice as well as the leo 1 often has to minimize exposure so getting more dmg per shot on avg during those opportunistic moments is an improvement for me. the little changes to dispersion accuracy and aim-time ofc are welcome too. mobility changes are hardly noticeable Kharkov Surprise Surprise: its fucking garbage. The entirety of the 1-5 is a TD camp fest that brutally punishes any kind of push (its also completely open to arty) the 6 line where the Trench is located isnt deep enough to be realistically used by anything that isnt a low profile Russian hover med, and will let TD's pop shots into your turret/cupolas otherwise. (its also open to arty) the 7-8 lines where most HT's will be was completely ruined compared to before. They removed alot of the smaller buildings that provided protection and allowed you to move up in the E/F-7 areas, they also put holes/windows in alot of the buildings in that spot along with larger rubble piles. overall this means the city has tunred from a close range brawl to a 100+ meter Hulldown pixel sniper fest. In addition the removal of so many buildings have allowed both TDs from the Fields and arty to loop in opportunistic shots. the 9-line is similar to before so mostly useless, and the 0-line was cut in half and had more rubble piles added for more hulldown pixel cupola sniping fun.

you strike me very heavily as a flat-earther

The 13 75 generates a lot of tears.

I always found that the deciding factor in WN8/WR is whether you typically carry early or carry late. This is related to camping, but not always the result of it. Early carries (whether that just be enough early damage or more subtle moves like trading HP for map control, push inertia, etc.) tend to be much less rewarding for WN8 and can result in a pretty serious rift in the two ratings. My only advice here is to experiment with the pace at which you play the game and adjust to what works best for you. Realistically you want to be carrying as early as possible, but some players are just atypically good at carrying later. If your current style is what you think is best, just pay no mind to your WN8. I wish I could do more than just echo the usual reply to this, but WN8 is just a number.

I despise boosts with a burning passion. Because they utterly destroyed all forms of map balance. There were some absolutely broken spots that made some maps unwinnable from one side. And clan wars degraded into a cesspool of playing 100% around these damn boosts where every single lobby you had the caller saying "can you do the boost?" "i need someone who can do the boost". It was the most unfun period of clan wars in the entire game for me (coupled with the 268v4 meta right after) and pretty much killed a very large portion of interest in this game for me. Anyway, wheeled vehicles. Agree with everyone else. Broken. Not needed in the game. Bad idea

It only took them 7 years

@Never we could always fix it ourselves by acing the tank. So it didn’t really bother me. Get good.